The unkindest 'cut'

Cut blocks legal, but defensive linemen wish they weren't

It isn't hard to get even the most mild-mannered NFL defensive lineman riled up.

Want to see one of them go from zero to wild-eyed and shouting in under six seconds?

Just mention the words cut block and its cousins.

"Why would you want to 'cut' me away from the play and take out my career?" Jaguars defensive end Marcellus Wiley asked. "Why not have it where you can still play the game, but guys can still go home to their families?''

While not mentioning any teams by name, Wiley said, "There are just certain teams in this league where, as a [defensive] lineman, you know you'll have to buckle up and get a little extra life insurance.''

Cut blocking -- even the name sounds threatening -- isn't complicated. It's a diving, one-man block at the knees. And it's perfectly legal when done from the front or side and within the tackle-to-tackle "box'' that aims to take a defender out of the play by taking him off his feet.

But defensive linemen feel it's also causing too many of them to be taken off the field on a stretcher with season- or career-ending injuries.

That's where the controversy comes into play.

"The league needs to just take cut blocking totally out,'' Jaguars defensive end Paul Spicer said. "Even if I'm out of the league and see that change, I'll be happy.''

Spicer speaks from hard-luck experience. The veteran defender had his season ended in Week 2 last year on an apparent chop block -- a mostly illegal cousin of the cut block -- by Denver Broncos lineman Matt Lepsis and running back Reuben Droughns.

Spicer, who suffered a fractured leg, was one of two Jacksonville defensive ends to have his 2004 season ended by a chop block. Rob Meier also went down with a fractured leg last November against the Minnesota Vikings.

An injury to former Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Tony Williams on Monday Night Football last year finally prompted the NFL's competition committee to take a closer look at low blocks in general.

Williams suffered a broken leg on a cut block from the back by Denver offensive tackle George Foster when Williams was downfield and well away from the play. Williams' season -- and perhaps his career -- was ended on that play. He was cut by the Jaguars this summer and remains out of football.

The league, after examining the issue, didn't eliminate cut blocks because the committee's research found fewer related injuries than it expected, according to the NFL's director of officiating. But similar blocks downfield -- mostly "peel-back'' blocks on broken plays and screen passes -- were banned starting this season.

And cut blocks also have their defenders, especially offensive linemen, who say their defensive counterparts don't always play fair, either.

Among the defenders is Spicer's teammate, veteran guard Chris Naeole, who said cut blocks are a "good tool'' for offensive linemen.

Spicer said he believes the league's attention to the subject has had a chilling effect on the Broncos and other teams.

"The Broncos and everybody still cut, but it's not as frequent,'' Spicer said, comparing this year with previous seasons. "They know the referees are looking for it, so you're not going to see as much of it going on.''

But Spicer stops short of praising the NFL, largely because he doesn't believe the league went far enough.

"It's probably going to take the right person getting hurt to get the rule changed,'' he said. "We all know how this thing works.''

Paving the way

If the use of the cut block in the modern era had a face, it would be Bobb McKittrick's.

The late San Francisco 49ers offensive line coach was both credited and reviled around the league for being the first to make the cut block the centerpiece of his team's blocking scheme.

Often adding injury to injury, McKittrick also instructed his lineman roll on defenders after cutting them. That practice finally was banned by the league in 1999, the same year he retired and 20 years after his arrival.

Former Raiders defensive lineman Howie Long nearly came to blows with McKittrick after a game, and ex-NFL linebacker Tim Green devoted an entire chapter of a book he wrote on the league to the coach, whom he dubbed "Dr.Mean.''

Cut blocks have been a part of football for decades but rarely were used in the NFL before McKittrick because offensive players made them at their own risk. Defenders weren't shy about retaliating, in part because they were low-paid and didn't have much to lose by fighting back.

But with salaries now so high and the NFL quick to hand out heavy fines, retaliation rarely is seen.

"You don't retaliate because nobody wants to have that money come out of their check,'' Wiley said.

McKittrick is gone, but his fondness for the cut block lives on, mainly through Alex Gibbs, who was the Atlanta Falcons' offensive line coach last season and is now listed as the team's consultant/offensive line.

Gibbs arrived in the NFL four years after McKittrick and immediately took to the cut block after seeing the 49ers use it to build one of the league's most explosive offenses.

Gibbs, though, didn't become the lightning rod for opponents of the cut block until he joined the Broncos as line coach when Mike Shanahan took over in 1995.

When Gibbs started using undersized linemen and several unheralded running backs (Terrell Davis was a sixth-round draft pick) to ring up 1,000-yard rushing seasons year after year, the rest of the league took notice. What they saw was a revival of McKittrick's cut-block methods, which helped Gibbs and the Broncos win two Super Bowls in the late 1990s but also made Denver's offensive linemen the most heavily fined in the NFL.

"Some of the things the Denver Broncos employed under Gibbs were unethical, to say the least, and I say that as a former offensive lineman myself,'' said retired Jaguars center Dave Widell, who also played for Denver for five years before Gibbs' arrival. "The Broncos were very good at what they did when they were winning Super Bowls, but there was a dark side to what they did in a lot of people's minds, too.''

Jaguars offensive tackle Ephraim Salaam, who played under Gibbs with the Broncos for two seasons, was more succinct.

"Under Gibbs, it was either cut [block] or get cut [released],'' Salaam said last year. "You really didn't have a choice in the matter.''

Gibbs left Denver after the 2003 season and went to Atlanta, where he took yet another undersized offensive line and immediately produced the NFL's No.1-ranked rushing attack last year.

Gibbs doesn't speak to the media and couldn't be reached for comment.

Here to stay?

Spicer and others say too many of his counterparts are paying the price for the cut block's success. If anything, Spicer says, the cut block and its variations should be banned as a matter of fairness.

"When a guy gets hurt and is done for the season, it hurts him and his team because they are counting on him,'' Spicer said in August. "We are the guys that suffer. A little fine and a 15-yard penalty for the guy that did it, that's nothing. He still gets to run out of that tunnel after that, winning and losing with his teammates and coaches. We're the guys sitting at home with our legs stuck in the air [in a cast], watching it on TV.''

What angers defensive linemen even more about cut blocks is that it doesn't take much skill to execute them.

"How hard is it to dive at a guy's legs?'' Spicer said this summer.

Spicer and other defensive linemen have received a sympathetic ear from the NFL's competition committee since the Tony Williams injury, which sparked an intense review by the committee this offseason.

What the committee found surprised NFL director of officiating Mike Pereira.

"The number of major injuries [from cut blocks and similar blocks] was so minimal, it was unbelievable,'' Pereira said last week. "It wasn't what we expected to find. We didn't come up with the numbers to make us change the rule.''

That's not to say the cut block came away unscathed, because Pereira said it will be reviewed every year by the competition committee.

"Eliminating the cut block has been talked about in the past, but it's hard enough to run the ball in this league,'' he said. "I know people say we're all about passing, but you want people to be able to run the ball, too. We want to maintain player safety, but we also want to maintain the integrity of the game.''

Pereira doesn't foresee a total ban on cut blocks anytime in the near future largely because the attention recently paid to them has done much to clean up offensive line play, at least through the first three games this season.

Pereira's department reviews every play of every game, and he said the first and only peel-back block wasn't detected until last week. Illegal cut blocks and chop blocks also have been minimal.

The only major flare-up about cut blocks involved Gibbs and the Falcons. Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher reported Gibbs and Atlanta to the league for what he said were repeated illegal cut blocks -- illegal because they came from the back -- during a preseason game.

But other than that, it has been quiet.

"So far, so good,'' Pereira said.

And cut blocks still have their share of defenders.

"Sometimes people overreact to a cut block, but when it's done properly and within the line of scrimmage, it's a very useful block,'' Widdel said.

Like most teams, the Jaguars favor more conventional, straight-up blocking techniques under offensive line coach Paul Boudreau. But even on Spicer's team, there is sentiment in favor of cut blocks.

"As long as they say we can do it, then we'll do it,'' Naeole said. "It doesn't matter what [defensive linemen] say. It's a good tool and a good block.

"Hey, this is a tough sport. People are going to get hurt no matter what you do.''